CASE STUDY #3 :
Wholesale Distribution

Real life solutions that have been designed and provided by MRE Consulting Group and allied firms.

A national importer and distributor of retail goods contacted us because they had outgrown their existing business and information systems.  They also had a looming Year 2000 problem with all of their existing software and hardware. All of it needed to be replaced within 18 months.

After performing an extensive discovery process, our consulting team found the problem to be worse than our customer/partner had thought.  Not only did the existing software have serious Year 2000 issues, but it had been so thoroughly compromised by add-in programs hastily written by in-house personnel, that an upgrade to the latest version of their canned software package was impossible.  The discovery process also turned up convincing evidence that nearly all of the company policies, management methods, and procedures were now inadequate for a firm of its' current size.

A team of consultants from the group developed new company procedures on a virtual emergency schedule basis.  While these procedures were developed, a full framework for the software development specifications were written from scratch, and then modified as needed while the software was fast tracked into production and implementation.  A completely new hardware architecture was designed, specified, quoted, bid, delivered and installed in preparation for the new software.  The Year 2000 deadline was met for all the major information systems, and no Year 2000 glitches were encountered.  One consultant has been retained on an ongoing basis to refine and improve all systems, both information and managerial.